Friday, May 12, 2006

Bush's Progressive Tax Cuts

Hat tip to Instapundit. Here’s the Joint Economic Committee’s report on the most recent tax cuts. The bottom 50% of all tax payers pay about 3.46% of the total personal income taxes collected by the federal government.

The IRS data illustrate the steeply progressive nature of the federal income tax. Further, data on the number of non-filers, tax shares and the number of taxpayers effectively paying zero federal income taxes must be considered before any valid distributional evaluation of various income tax proposals or legislation can be made.

There you have it, folks. So when you hear someone complain that Bush’s tax cuts benefited the top income earners the most, there is a reason why. It’s because there’s not much left to cut from what the bottom half of all taxpayers have to pay. According to this data, the tax structure is about as progressive as it ever has been.